Spider-Man Writer Sides With Sony Over Disney Split

The battle over Spider-Man‘s cinematic future still doesn’t appear to be over. With Disney at one point rumored to have been negotiating with Sony to buy back the character, and now Apple rumored to be considering buying Sony and creating a whole new movie licensing deal for the hero, fans are still spending their days online agonizing over whether or not Spidey will be allowed to return home to the MCU, or if he’ll be yanked into a separate cinematic universe by Sony.

It may be a while before we see a resolution to all this, but writer David Koepp recently waded into the Disney V Sony debate regarding Spider-Man. Fans have been lobbying hard to keep the superhero under Disney, rolling out petitions, launching social media campaigns against the studio and tweeting at anyone who might have a say in deciding Spider-Man’s movie future. But according to Koepp, who wrote the script for Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man film starring Tobey Maguire, the support of fans for Disney over Sony regarding Spidey’s legal custody battle is entirely misplaced, as he told Den of Geek the following during an interview:

I’ve read a few articles about it, yes. I understand both sides. Disney wants what it wants, and obviously it’s used to acquiring and controlling. But I understand Sony’s point of view better: ‘But wait, it’s ours. We own it. You can’t just have half of it. You can’t just take it.’ So it’s a tough situation. And I think certainly the last couple of Spider-Man movies have been terrific. But the animated film that they did without Disney’s involvement was, you know, even more terrific. What’s weird to me is those Marvel movie fans who are quick to spring to Disney’s defense like they’re a plucky underdog who needs to be defended. [laughs] They are not a plucky underdog.

Honestly, there’s a lot of truth to Koepp’s statements. While the MCU successfully integrated Spider-Man into the larger Avengers universe, the heavy influence of other characters, particularly Iron Man, often seemed to prevent the webbed wall-crawler from becoming his own hero instead of a backup Avenger or worse, Iron Man’s sidekick. Meanwhile, Sony has a track record of creating possibly the three greatest solo Spider-Man films yet, in the form of the first two installments in Raimi’s trilogy and Into the Spider-Verse.

At the end of the day though, fans just want to see a good Spider-Man flick. And with audience-favorite Tom Holland continuing to play Peter Parker, all he really needs is a good script and a capable director to churn out a solid film, no matter which studio backs the project.